The Nobel Prizes are prizes awarded annually to people (and, in the case of the Peace Prize, sometimes to organizations) who have completed outstanding research, invented ground-breaking techniques or equipment, or made an outstanding contribution to society in physics, chemistry, literature, peace, medicine or physiology and economics. They are widely regarded as the supreme commendation in their respective subject areas. Those honored with a prize are known as Nobel Laureates. No prize was given in the field of mathematics. Many reasons were given for this omission but actual reason is not known.

The Prizes were instituted by the Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel through his will. They were first awarded in 1901, five years after Nobel's death. The prize in economics, instituted by the Bank of Sweden, has been awarded since 1969.

As of October 2006, a total of 781 Nobel Prizes have been awarded, 763 to individuals (33 of these to women) and 18 to organizations. A few Prize winners have declined the award. There are years in which one or more Prizes are not awarded; during World War II, for instance, no Prizes were awarded in any category between 1940 and 1942. Each Prize stipulates, however, that it must be awarded at least once every five years. Prizes cannot be revoked. Since 1974, no award may be made posthumously, i.e. nominees must be alive at the time of their nomination.

The names of the laureates were announced in the month of October every year. The Prizes are then awarded at formal ceremonies held annually on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.  The Peace Prize ceremony has been held at the Norwegian Nobel Institute (1905-1946); the Aula of the University of Oslo (1947-1990); and most recently at the Oslo City Hall. As of 2005, the other Prize ceremonies have been held at the Stockholm Concert Hall.

Each award can be given to a maximum of three recipients per year. They each consist of a gold medal; a diploma; the extension of Swedish citizenship; and a sum of money. Currently the latter is about ten million Swedish Kronor (slightly more than one million Euros or about 1.4 million US dollars).  In case of more than one winner the prize is split among the winner. Prize in the same category can not beven for more than 3 people.

Posthumous nominations for Prizes are not allowed. In two cases the Prize was awarded posthumously to people who died in the months between their nomination and selection as a winner: UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld (1961, Peace) and Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1931, Literature). Since 1974, laureates must be alive at the time of the announcement of the award in October. There has been one laureate - William Vickrey (1996, Economics) - who died after the prize was announced but before it could be presented to him. In 1948 Mahatma Gandhi would have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, but he was killed several days after the award was announced.

 In 1973 when Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho shared the Peace Prize for bringing peace to Vietnam, even though the War in Vietnam was ongoing at the time. Le Duc Tho declined the award, for the stated reason that peace had not been achieved

Mahatma Gandhi was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times between 1937 and 1948 but never won it.

Iin 2002, a Prize was awarded to Koichi Tanaka and John Fenn for the development of mass spectrometry in protein chemistry, an award that failed to recognise the achievements of Franz Hillenkamp and Michael Karas of the Institute for Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Frankfurt.

Rosalind Franklin, made some of the key steps toward the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953, but died of ovarian cancer in 1958, four years before Francis Crick, James D. Watson and Maurice Wilkins (one of Franklin's collaborators) were awarded the Prize for Medicine or Physiology in 1962.

In the history of the Nobel Prize, there have been only four people to have received two Nobel Prizes. These are:

Marie Curie

Physics [1903]: Discovery of Radioactivity

Chemistry [1911]: Isolation of Pure Radium

Linus Pauling

Chemistry [1954]: Hybridized Orbital Theory

Peace [1962]: Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Activism

John Bardeen

Physics [1956]: Invention of Transistor

Physics [1972]: Theory of Superconductivity

Frederick Sanger

Chemistry [1958]: Structure of the Insulin Molecule

Chemistry [1980]: Virus Nucleotide Sequencing

• Otto Heinrich Warburg was an exceptional case. He had the distinction of being offered two Nobel Prizes: Medicine [1931]—On Respiration of cells—that he received, and, another Nobel Award in the same field in 1944: which he was prevented from accepting by the Nazi government, which had issued a decree in 1937 that prohibited Germans from accepting Nobel Prizes.

• The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1917, 1944, and 1963. The first two prizes were specifically in recognition of the group's work during the world wars.

• Eight fathers and sons have both won Nobels (J.J. Thomson in 1906 and George Paget Thomson in 1937)(William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg both in 1915)(Niels Henrik Bohr in 1922 and Aage Bohr in 1975) (Arthur Kornberg in 1959 and Roger D. Kornberg in 2006); one husband (Pierre Curie), wife (Marie Curie), and daughter (Irène Joliot-Curie) have all won prizes. The only siblings to win Nobel Prizes are Jan Tinbergen (Economics, 1969) and his younger brother Niko Tinbergen (Medicine, 1973).

• Only one person has the distinction of being an Oscar winner and a Nobel Laureate. The Irishman, George Bernard Shaw winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925 won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 1938.